


on ominous gifts

by louscr



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Ominous Gift Giving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 13:09:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21969853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/louscr/pseuds/louscr
Summary: Inside there is a pair of glasses, so near identical to her own aside from the engravings lining the thin frames.She is careful not to touch anywhere near the inside of the box, unease sitting heavy in her stomach as she observes them. They don't look dangerous, but they feel dangerous, aching in Gertrude's jaw and calling to her with desperation.
Relationships: Gertrude Robinson & various avatars
Comments: 6
Kudos: 93





	on ominous gifts

**Author's Note:**

> for tumblr user crykea! for the tma secret snickerdoodle gift exchange  
> (sorry this is so late! it took a bit of time to get your tumblr lol)

The first gift Gertrude receives is from Elias, and looking back on it, she begins to think that the whole thing was probably orchestrated by him in the first place.

_ (Presents for his Archivist: fear for his Archivist. _

_ It is a good thing then that fear is not so easily controlled, and that there is often something it itself is scared of.) _

She debates throwing it away without opening it. 

_ (Except, while Elias may be an idiot, he is not stupid. He has chosen her, his Archivist, well.) _

It is a simply wrapped box, the waxy paper a dull red. It is heavy in her hands as Gertrude unwraps it, carefully peeling off the tape and unfolding the pristine wrapping, drawing the moments out and futilely hoping the  _ need to know _ growing in her lungs will shrink before she can finish.

The paper falls away to reveal a dark wooden box, every knot in its grain large and searching. It makes her skin crawl and her teeth grit and the core of her that hates Elias so entirely flare into rage. There is a simple metal clasp and simple metal hinges on the box, and Gertrude would be surprised—if she still could be—that they aren't watching her too. 

It doesn't take thought to swing the part of the lock keeping the lid closed out of the way, so Gertrude is doing it before she even notices the action. Her hands do not shake when she slows herself, and they do not shake when she opens the box.

Inside there is a pair of glasses, so near identical to her own aside from the engravings lining the thin frames.

She is careful not to touch anywhere near the inside of the box, unease sitting heavy in her stomach as she observes them. They don't look dangerous, but they feel dangerous, aching in Gertrude's jaw and calling to her with desperation.

_ (Desperation though, is a feeling Gertrude is incredibly familiar with, one that she no longer allows to tear her to shreds.) _

She snaps the lid of the box shut and hides it in the back of her desk's bottom drawer.

_ (Gertrude tells herself she does not want to wear the glasses, that she just wants to get on with her work and ignore that watchful box in her desk drawer.) _

* * *

The seashell Peter leaves her after one of his visits to the institute is white striped red perpendicular to its ridges, perfectly symmetrical and unchipped. It fits just in the palm of her hand, barely two inches long.

_ (It fits in her palm when she feels its cold seep beneath her skin, aching and rotten. It fits in her palm when it sings of fog and the static crash of waves upon the Lonely's palid shores.) _

_ (It fits in a locked drawer at the bottom of her desk.) _

* * *

Gertrude hears the ticking first, and in the back of her mind is barely surprised that someone would be as obvious as to hide an obnoxiously loud bomb in her office. Then Gertrude sees the clock, nearly tipping off the side of her desk, and is relieved that she won't have to deal with anything more ominous than a gift.

_ (Because this is the pattern, she has come to believe. There is something new in her office, and she will hate it.) _

_ (Gertrude has practice with patterns, with plucking up the strings of nonsense and weaving them into a plan.) _

A closer look doesn't garner that same creeping fear as the glasses Elias had left her had or the chill of the shell Peter had left, though it is still other in the way that only things touched by an entity are. Its hands move over second after second, but somehow the passing of the seconds upon the clock feels distorted and wrong, although her reality stays moored in linearity.

She will hide it in her desk later, once she's had the chance to clean a drawer out, but for now she leaves it perched upon a stack of paperwork as she skims a statement.

The clock strikes midnight just after she finishes, and when Gertrude glances out a window an hour later it is late afternoon and the sun is hanging low and intense just above the skyline.

_ (It will be years before she learns that the clock's tolling had marked the moment, down to the second, that Eric Delano died.) _

_ (Later, when three gunshots ring through the archive's stifling quiet, the clock will strike midnight again, hidden away in an intricately carved desk.) _

* * *

Simon Fairchild mails a box to Gertrude's home address, and she pointedly doesn't think about where he may have learned that information. Within, is a heavy, canvas bag, tapered flat at the top and laden with straps.

_ (The parachute bag is empty, and a quick glance within it drops her stomach through both her feet and two whole floors to the empty nothingness below.) _

* * *

Adelard's name is signed on the return address of the letter sitting innocently upon Gertrude's desk, the arching script familiar and nearly comforting.

_ (She decides that she will not open this one within the archives within moments, even though she knows her mind is safe from Elias. _

_ There are much too many eyes for that.) _

The day passes slowly, clock ticking discordantly from within her desk. She reads a statement to the rooms quiet darkness, but doesn't record it. When the sun sets, she goes home, or to what passes as it now that she spends almost all her time in the archives.

No one watches her now, and it is something approaching peace, the absence of that weighted gaze like a balm. 

She slips a nail under the envelope's seam and tears it open along its edge. 

_ (The paper nicks into the tip of her finger as she does so, drawing blood to the surface and staining it. A reminder that she still has this, beneath everything she has lost. _

_ For now, she is still human and she can still hope ardently for Adelard's safety as she reads the short letter.) _

* * *

The handle of the main entrance to the archives is a bit past singed when Gertrude tries the door, her hand coming away sooty and covered in ash. Beneath it, there are swirling burns of three fingerprints, as though someone had reached out, hesitated to open the door.

_ (Gertrude does not wipe them away, and instead thinks of The Lightless Flame and its messiah whenever she enters the archives. Both with pity and with caution.) _

_ (She will not become something like that.) _

* * *

Gertrude's last gift is carved into the wood of her desk, deep and with something nearing anger, yet bordering paradoxically on gentle. It is a fractal, complex and arching through the wood.

She doesn't know when the Distortion found the time to make its way into her office and trace its mark across the entirety of her desk.

The carving doesn't make her feel regret. But in the moment, she feels it should.

_ (Maybe it makes her feel fear. _

_ She's not sure she'd notice at this point.) _

It is so beautiful, complex, winding and twisting. It is the only gift that she will not tuck away into a shadowy corner.

_ (Regret is not an emotion Gertrude lets herself feel anymore, lets ruin her. She has a job. She has a world to save. _

_ There is no time for the memory of blond curls and a boy that could have, in another life, been something like a son. No time for the memory of cold rolling fog, and an island that doesn't exist. _

_ No time for abandonment. _

_ The fractal is cold beneath her palms. She does not feel sad nor guilty. Some things are required. She pulls over a pad of paper so her pen doesn't rip along the Distortion's path as she writes. _

_ Gertrude Robinson has received a great many gifts, and has lost so many more.) _


End file.
